He tried to imagine himself explaining it:

"Jerome, there's a vampire in the basement. He's an

old friend of mine - an old boyfriend to be exact.

Don't blame me, I didn't invite him, but what could I

do? Anyway, you asked him in yourself - yes, you did,

it's the man let in last night, the one with car

trouble. That's how it works: a vampire can't enter a

dwelling without an invitation, but then they come and

go as they bloody well please. And I've agreed to let

him and a few friends use the place for sanctuary, but

don't worry, they're keeping away until you're on your

way to Titan. Just make sure you move as soon as you

get back and there shouldn't be any problems. Sorry, I

know it's a pain in the arse, but there's something I

haven't told you yet: I'm a vampire, too. So you can

see that I'm kind of honor bound to provide them with

a safe place to nest in by day after a hard night's

murdering and blood-drinking."

He packed up the day's samples and put the equipment

in order for the next day. No, he couldn't tell Jerome

any of this. Even assuming he believed it, there

wasn't anything he could do. Best if Eugene just

things take their course and try to make the most of

their remaining ten days together.

How much simpler it would have been if his feelings

for Jerome had remained as objective as he had assumed

they would. After all, Jerome Eugene Morrow was a

genetically designed Homo Superior, and Vincent Anton

Freeman a common faith-birth. Bred from birth to never

doubt his own perfection, Jerome had known the path

his life would take as certainly as if it had been

written in the stars. Written in his *genes*, the

building blocks of life itself. How could he fail? But

fail he had. Standing in second place on the Olympic

tier, he had been humiliatingly conscious of the

champion on first casting a shadow over him. He had

stared ahead as "Advance Australia Fair" was played

instead of "God Save The Queen", thinking up all sorts

of reasons why this race should be the first one he

had ever lost, reasons that denied the simple yet

evident fact that *someone had been better than him*.

It was intolerable. How dare anyone stand one step

above him! His indignation was beyond all bounds. He

had eventually swallowed the truth that he wasn't

perfect, and that others might be closer to the ideal

than he, but it was a bitter pill and it didn't teach

him humility. More painful was his family's reaction;

having always been as assured of Jerome's potential as

Jerome himself could be, they became bewildered and

hurt, as if by failing he had insulted them with

monstrous ingratitude. It would have been better if

they had reacted with vocal anger, but instead there

was a kind of pained withdrawal, a withholding of

affection, not deliberate, but clearly showing that

they felt Jerome's failure as their own, as if Jerome

himself had no more emotional investment in his

accomplishments that the stallion has in the race he

competes in.

If Jerome had been taught to think of others; if his

parents had raised him to value himself as an

individual rather than an ubermensch; if their love

had been unconditional, rather than the selfish kind

of love that relies on what its object can provide for

its giver, then Jerome might have been able to deal

with his letdown rationally, even to be proud of his

Olympic silver. But for his whole life, his ego had

been pampered and his self-esteem starved, and the

only result was an exagerrated sense of entitlement.

He had been a sitting duck for someone like Damien.

The vampire had first approached him a week after the

games, promising amends for all his previous

disappointments and immortality to boot. Jerome had

agreed in the spirit of revenge, thinking not at all

of long-term consequences or who he might be hurting.

Damien had embraced him within a month of his first

approach, and Jerome was soon settled in as the latest

member of the brood.

What followed was crushing disillusionment. Damien had

promised unspeakable highs and eternal life free from

responsibility. What he gave was really no better than

what a junkie experienced: food, sex and sleep were

just as necessary as ever. Yes, tasting the blood was

everything Damien had promised, and it had been sweet

to visit the one who had defeated him at the games and

drain him dry in his bed; but in between there was the

constant craving, worse than anything a mortal would

feel for the most addictive drug. And the common

mortal necessities had lost all their comfort,

becoming bland and monotonous labors. Even sex with

Damien quickly palled. The only times he found comfort

with his lover had been on those rare times when he

had consented to share blood. Otherwise, existence had

become a hollow mockery, making him realize the true

meaning of the prase "living dead". Then there were

all these ridiculous restrictions: garlic and

crucifixes were just as repellant as reputation had it

(although the latter wasn't such a big deal in an age

when man had replaced God with himself, and the former

was more of a phobia or allergy rather than a positive

deterrent), he could only enjoy one hour of sunlight a

day (if enjoy was the right word - even between noon

and one, the "safe" time for a vampire, the light

would glare unpleasantly so that it was a relief to

return to cool shadow), and one only had to place

roses across the exits to a vampire's dwelling to

prevent them leaving. And while he might be able to

control the minds of wolves, rats, bats, crows and

moths, this really didn't do any more than provide him

with unusual pets.

But the worst thing was the guilt. Slaying the

champion had had no immediate bad consequences for

him, since it was only revenge. Then there had

followed a succession of victims that Eugene was

unable to pity, either because of real or perceived

worthlessness: thieves, whores, murderers, drug

addicts, rapists, child molesters, cripples. But one

night, the victim had only been a child. Eugene had

gone out with Damien and Tania on and they spotted a

little boy on his own, obviously an Invalid, separated

accidentally from his parents and frightened to be out

so late alone. Tania, who had been eighteen when she

was embraced and looked no older than fourteen, found

it easy to befriend the child and reassure him. She

told him they would give him somewhere to sleep for

the night and find his parents for him in the morning.

The boy, who told them his name was Sean and he would

be eleven in two weeks, accompanied them in perfect

faith. As soon as the door was shut behind him, the

brood fell on him. If they had killed him instantly it

still would have been horrible, but vampires have an

aversion to dead blood. When it had been Jerome's turn

the child had been too weak to move, but still

conscious, wide eyes scared and hurting, making a plea

he was unable to give voice to as Jerome forced

himself to sink his fangs into the frail little neck

to drink. He drank it quickly, leaving none for the

rest, wanting only to put the poor child out of his

misery. Fortunately, the brood had mistaken this for a

novice's eagerness and cheered him before setting out

to find more prey for the rest.

But Damien had been watching him with greater

perception, and when the others left he remained

behind to try and comfort him. Patiently, he explained

that this was all just a vampire's lot; the blood-lust

was unconquerable until sated. Hadn't he felt, despite

his conscience, intense rapture when he drank from the

child? And couldn't he still feel himself glowing

inside, and hadn't the thirst receded? In time he

would learn to treasure the hit and his guilt would

disappear. He didn't even have to hunt with the rest

of the brood; most of them had had their own trouble

adjusting, and would understand if Jerome preferred to

hunt with only Damien for company, or even stalk prey

by himself, selecting victims who wouldn't be missed

and who had little quality of life to lose in the

first place.

But as Jerome listened, all he could think of was the

eleventh birthday (in just two weeks!) that Sean

wouldn't be celebrating. His clothes had been obvious

hand-me-downs, but clean and well cared for. His

parents must have loved him. Were there already

presents hiding in their closet, waiting for Sean's

special day? Had they planned a surprise party and

invited all his friends? Had they bought him a scooter

or a chemistry set? Or something even more expensive,

something that had required a whole year of careful

saving and scraping, all to satisfy their darling's

darling wish?

Still, Jerome was a vampire, and such sentiment was

inappropriate. With a tremendous effort, he struggled

to convince Damien that his remorse was just a

knee-jerk reaction, nothing more than could be

expected from anyone who had only just commenced an

eternal life as a serial killer. He succeeded so well

that Damien became more at ease, assuring Jerome that

such pangs would be worn down eventually; he only had

to give himself time. But what Jerome hadn't told him

when the rest of the brood returned around dawn, their

color unnaturally heightened from fresh blood, eyes at

once dazed with blood-drunkenness and bright with

predators' joy, laughing about the tactics this or

that victim had tried to save himself, was that he

couldn't work out which would be worse: if the pangs

of guilt remained, or if they faded until he took as

much joy in the kill as the worst of them.

At the stroke of noon he ventured out alone. Finding a

library close by, he retreated to a corner with the

last few weeks' papers. There was no mention of the

child yet, and the other's had been almost totally

ignored, but there was plenty on the Australian that

Jerome had killed in his bed. Comments from his

grief-stricken family, a condensed biography (a

technical Invalid, but with naturally superior genetic

structure, a life-long love of swimming, his joy at

the chance to compete internationally, his shock at

winning gold and his hopes that it would lead to

friendlier relations between god-children and the

genetically designed) - it all served to increase

Jerome's remorse; not only that, but he finally began

to see how completely his own life had been governed

by impulses of the most selfish and petty kind.

That night, he had told Damien he preferred to hunt

alone. And he *had* killed - he was still a young

vampire after all, and the thirst was relentless. But

then he had hurried to the place where he and Damien

had buried Sean. He carried the wasted body to a place

where it was sure to be found before the brood could

discover its absence. Then he had drunk as much

alcohol as he needed to give himself some dutch

courage (although this drunkenness was so trivial

compare to a blood high as to be negligible) and fled

to a distant part of the city, where he stepped in

front of the first speeding car he saw. The result was

no more than he had hoped for; the most violent

accident can't kill a vampire, but it can still

cripple him. And there was always the hope that the

brood would be so enraged by his defection that they

would kill him as a traitor and a threat.

But nothing of the kind had happened. True, they

tracked him down immediately, but when they came to

see him their manner had showed nothing but kindness.

It was soon apparent that, instead of anger and

suspicion, they felt nothing but the most sincere

compassion. These monsters, who Jerome had seen

viciously taunt a dying child because his terror gave

a greater poignancy to his flavor, who joked about

some of the ridiculous stunts that a mortal would pull

when his life was in danger, who saw anything with a

finite lifespan as immeasurably beneath them except as

the source of their only high, consistently treated

others of their own kind with affection and respect.

In this, Jerome realized that they were above even

himself. They had gone out of their way to bring him

fresh victims - which his will was still too weak to

refuse - so that he could drink at night, even though

they risked their own safety to do it. They promised

to care for him when he was released, they even spoke

hopefully of Ulysses - the wandering King of the

vampires who had embraced the first brood, and whose

blood was able to heal the hurts of mortal and

immortal alike. Only Damien spoke to him with any

reproach, and that was only out of the grief that

Jerome's suffering caused him. Their love for him was

clearly unselfish, which made his situation all the

more unbearable; unable to hate them, he could only

hate himself more. Finally, desperate to escape, he

had fled on a midnight flight to America and bought

the house that he now shared with the new Jerome.



- TBC